Why Should I Join a Student Organization?

Everyone knows students are busy folks. Campus life, studying, homework, family, first professional experience, spring breaks, traveling – why should anyone care about participating in a student organization on the first place? This can’t be answered in one sentence, not even in one paragraph. All in all, there’re 7 sound reasons why student organization participating pays of greatly.

Making new contacts

Student organization is first and foremost a company of individuals with pretty same worldview, life goals and skills. From one you can learn, from others you can get to know people who might help you later on in your career, etc. At the end of the day, you can simply make new friends with people sharing your interests and hobbies.

Developing soft skills

Today your ‘people skills’ are as important in the eyes of an employer as your actual working abilities too. Being obsessed with ‘teambuilding’, ‘corporate spirit’ and ‘positive working environment’, corporate people, white collars and business owners are more likely to prefer an employee with good soft skills rather than an expert who can’t get along with the rest of team quite well. As a member of a student organization you could have lots of room to put your people skills to proper testing.

Learning teamwork

Just like soft skills, teamwork abilities are important when doing job side by side with other experts. Whereas a student organization gives you a safe working environment to try new things and make mistakes, use this to your advantage in order to perform top-notch when time comes to work on serious company projects.

Trying out things learn in classroom

Lectures, essays and textbooks give you tons of theoretical knowledge. However, not all knowledge is actually useful in a professional environment. In its turn, a student organization lets you explore which theoretical things will benefit your career and which are for general development only. Within the walls of student organization you can try many things, explore, and learn from mistakes.

Working with people from different cultural background

With physical borders almost not-existing in the modern-day world, chances are high after graduation you’ll have to work side by side with experts from different countries, with different cultural background, level of English and customs too. In the beginning it’s never easy, so use your student organization membership in order to learn how to work with people who aren’t Americans and even not Europeans!

Gaining leadership skills

In professional world, there’re two types of people – leaders and followers. While with the student organization, use the opportunity to learn whether you’re made from the leadership clay or maybe the role of gray eminence suits you more.

Solidifying your resume

As a student, when forwarding a resume it’s important that student organization membership will be listed as one of your college achievements. Recent case study showed nowadays employers appreciate applicants who took active part in social life of their community, did charity work and were a part of some student organizations. Chances are high such applicants are gogetting and resourceful, exactly the kind of an employee valued most these days.

What about you, did you take part in a student organization? What did you learn? How did you benefit from the membership? Please share your story in the comments!